


It's A Kind of Magic

by historiologies



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Curses, F/M, Historical References, M/M, Magic AU, Practical Magic AU, natural magic AU, warning there is description of killing a dove
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-02-28 06:00:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13265199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historiologies/pseuds/historiologies
Summary: Wonwoo is a witch. But being a witch has consequences, including inflicting a great family curse on the people they love.He did not sign up for this.(A Practical Magic AU)





	1. Ingredients

**Author's Note:**

> PROMPT #132: Wonwoo is a witch who doesn’t believe in love, so he casts a spell about a perfect guy so impossible he shouldn’t exist. Practical Magic AU.
> 
> Happy Soonwoo Day! This is the first part of what I'm projecting to be three parts. Of the three parts, Soonyoung will probably only be in one and a half of it. LOL. I'm sorry!
> 
> If you haven't seen the movie "Practical Magic", [here's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practical_Magic) the Wikipedia entry for it. The plot of this fic is heavily inspired by this movie, so if you read the plot of it or watch it, you will basically be spoiled for the outcome of this fic. Anyway, the plot of this is almost the same as that of the movie, except think of it as the plot but retold in an east Asian/Korean context. The magic that will be the subject of this fic is more nature-driven than the way the movie presents it, although forces of nature also drive the powers of the Owens sisters. Based on my research, that's the way magic was recognized in Korea. We start off this fic during the Goryeo period of Korean history, but Wonwoo and Seulgi are from contemporary/2010s South Korea.
> 
> By the way, I've written most everything in English, but please pretend that the proper language suffixes and callings are inserted, particularly for the aunts and between Seulgi and Wonwoo.
> 
> For visual references, Choseungdal Island is based on a mix of South Korea's [Hongdo](https://www.lonelyplanet.com/travel-blog/tip-article/wordpress_uploads/2013/07/koreanisland2_cs.jpg) and [Cheongsando](http://tong.visitkorea.or.kr/cms/resource/39/1784239_image2_1.jpg) (from its cameo in SVT's One Fine Day: Castaway).
> 
> Part Two will come soon, hopefully before the start of February! :)) We'll see when Part Three will push through.
> 
> Title is from a wonderful Queen song of the same name.
> 
> Thank you for listening to me babble on and on before the start of this fic. This is devoted, as always, to the lovely flowers of the Soonwoonet garden. I love you all so much <3 Thank you for everything, everything, everything. I will always adore you all, until our gay star dads fall from the sky.

_The drums start quiet, a whisper to quietly coax the sun into the dawn._

_Haerim bows her head, a faint smile on her face; she feels light, almost like she’s floating, the steady rhythm of the beat and the scent of incense carrying out the thoughts in her mind out through her quiet exhale. She breathes in again when the chants begin, the low and calm voices surrounding her, in unison with the words coming out of her own mouth and the cadence of the drums, resounding loudly through the temple until they fade, softly, into the chirps of the magpies in the trees._

_She bends forward, lips almost pressed to the ground, in reverence. She folds her feet underneath her robes, closes her eyes. Already, she steels herself for the day ahead. What a day it was to be: she had been tasked to pay a house call at the Kims, because their oldest boy had fallen ill, and then she was to run to the third Lee house to teach their new house servants how to change bandages properly, as the Lee patriarch was not pleased with their work at dressing his old battle wounds._

_But that was all for the afternoon. The rest of the morning was hers to keep, and hers to spend._

_She makes her way out of the temple, bowing at every person who greets her and wishes her day well. Her village is small but rapidly expanding; many jest with her and tell her it’s because people from far and wide are learning of her prowess as an herbalist._

_Most know, however, the real reason. No one speaks of it, but everyone knows._

_She steps off the well-worn path to walk into the forest, the sounds of a village creaking into movement falling away behind her. It’s barely half past sunrise, so the chill in the air lingers. Nonetheless, her shoulders sag as soon as she is fully enveloped by the solitude of the greenery, all societal pretenses shrugging off her shoulders. Idly, she reaches up and unclasps the tie she wound around her hair upon waking that morning. Ink-black hair spills down over her back, and she runs her long, thin fingers through them, smoothing out any snags and tangles her morning haste had caused._

_In silence and grace, she walks, her feet leading her to her destination without forethought, as if being led there by some supernatural force. She knows she will not be disturbed here, not in her forest, not in her sacred space. The villagers respect her enough to keep their distance, and any newcomers are carefully dissuaded from walking into this part of the forest by the strongest wards she is capable of._

_She stops in front of a great tree, the oldest in the forest, an ancient tree with branches of serrated leaves arching over a small table she had set up, the bunches of dried persimmons she had left as offerings last time strewn over the surface, untouched. Beyond and through the last clutch of trees, the sea glitters a brilliant blue. Already she can see a scattering of boats dotting the horizon. She resists stepping out onto the clearing, however. She is merely here to recharge, not to cast anything in particular. There was nothing to be worried over, not right now, anyway. Her hands glide down her robes, loosening them enough so that they don’t wrinkle as she steps out of them._

_A soft breeze picks up and the leaves that litter the ground swirl around her in a careful, circular pattern. Skyclad, Haerim lifts up her hands, an ancient language falling from her lips, rendered indecipherable by time, passed on from generation to generation. There is no flash of light, no mystical glow from within--there is just her and the forces of nature._

_Whispers start to filter into her head, warm and familiar, like a hand open to clasp, to hold._

_A light rain begins to fall from the heavens, and she smiles, grateful for what she has, and the promise of the new day._

 

«── « ⋅ » ──»

 

“Wonwoo! Hurry up!”

Wonwoo sighs, exasperated, as he struggles with both the impediment of his truly terrible vision and the bigger suitcase he’s dragging behind him. Pushing up his glasses with his free hand, he heaves an almighty sigh before he maneuvers the suitcase around him so that he can push it forward onto the dock platform instead of dragging it behind him.

“Seulgi, wait, please.”

His older sister is already on the dock, a giant expanse of wood that encompasses the western shore of the island. She’s standing, back rimrod straight, palm shielding her eyes from the heavy sunshine beating down their necks. Her hair, which was twisted into a severe plait that morning by their grandmother, is already unraveling from the stress of their boat ride, painting little black lines all over her white cardigan. She doesn’t even look away as Wonwoo comes up behind her, although she does take his hand in hers.

“Don’t move too far away from me, Wonwoo. We need to find the aunts.”

Wonwoo opens his mouth to argue that Seulgi was the one who left _him_ on the deck, not the other way around, when he spots two familiar faces waving madly at them. “I think they’ve found us.”

“Aunt Chunhee! Aunt Hyunjae!” Seulgi waves back with equal aplomb, and Wonwoo gets tugged mercilessly forward; he barely has the wherewithal to grab at the suitcase bars so that he can drag it behind them.

They’re squeezed tight as soon as they set foot off the dock; his aunts are both tall like his father, but Chunhee is slightly rounder of build and her features are softer, a little more curved than her older sister’s. Hyunjae is tall and imposing, sharp eyes almost always severely streaked with black, but Wonwoo has seen how she is around kittens, so she isn’t quite as intimidating to him as she might be to others.

“You’ve grown so big,” Chunhee simpers as she gets on her knees and holds their faces in her hands. Wonwoo ducks his head, a little overwhelmed by the enthusiasm; Seulgi beams. “Did you eat on the ferry? Boat food’s not the right food for little children.”

“Aunt Chunhee, I’m not a little kid anymore,” Seulgi says, giggling. They’re walking to Hyunjae’s beat up old Hyundai, his aunt’s arm around Wonwoo’s shoulder warm and welcome. “I’m eleven, you know.”

“And I’m nine,” Wonwoo quips, eager to contribute.

Chunhee shoots him an indulgent smile, and Hyunjae hides a snicker in her long black sleeve. They toss their suitcases in the trunk and usher the kids into the backseat. “My mistake,” Chunhee says, nodding. “I guess you two are too old for the patbingsu Hyunjae prepared, then.”

“And the hotteok,” Hyunjae adds soberly. “Don’t forget the hotteok.”

“Right, right. And what about the peanut cookies?” Chunhee asks, as she snaps the seatbelt into place.

“Pshh,” Hyunjae snorts, wrist twisting the key to start the car. The engine rattles gently, as if it was simply reminding its owner of her responsibility to have it brought in for a tune-up, before reluctantly proceeding to ignition. “Of course nine and eleven are _too old_ for peanut cookies. What do you two think?”

Wonwoo bites back a smile as Seulgi starts bouncing around in the backseat. “Aunt Hyunjae,” she whines, trying to sound convincing. She nudges Wonwoo, who clears his throat, before pouting most prettily. He’d always been one to fall in step with whatever Seulgi did. “We’re never too old for that.”

“Well then.” Hyunjae looks at them in the rearview mirror, and something around her eyes soften as she watches the two kids, who had been through so much tragedy and sorrow, laughing over the prospect of having desserts so early in the morning. She feels Chunhee’s fingers clasp around hers, and knows her sister is feeling the same.

“Let’s go home.”

 

«── « ⋅ » ──»

 

The first morning of Chuseok in the Jeon household for the past few years has always begun the same way:

Wonwoo wakes up at exactly 6:56 in the morning to the feeling of feet scrambling over his warm duvet covers, the one with the night sky patterns. He groans, and Seulgi laughs, telling him to wake up already so they can enjoy the holiday. She bounds off in the direction of the aunts' rooms to knock until one of them relents, usually Chunhee. Wonwoo sinks back into a light slumber until Hyunjae slips into his room, runs a hand down the back of his head and whispers that Seulgi is helping herself to his share of his breakfast. At that, he grumbles unintelligibly but reaches out to pick up his glasses from his bedside table, sticking them and blinking owlishly until his vision isn't blurry and he can actual see beyond three feet in front of him. He bows at Chunhee groggily, wishing her a happy Chuseok, before running past her to head off Seulgi's intentions.

This year is no different, although this time he almost skids past the kitchen in his rush.

"You're getting clumsier every year," Seulgi quips at him, as she sits next to his uneaten breakfast.

Wonwoo scowls self-consciously, his ankles knocking together as he sinks next to her. "You're just jealous I'm finally taller than you this year." He rubs idly at the bruise forming on his kneecap from his earlier near-mishap.

Seulgi shrugs. "I don't mind being shorter than you." She scrunches her nose at him, teasing. "I will at least be prettier than you."

At this, Wonwoo makes a sound that's a cross between a giggle and a snort.

"Now, now, kids," Chunhee chides them quietly from the kitchen, where she's pulling out the _songpyeon_ that they've been making from scratch in the days leading up to the holiday. Already, the smell of pine is wafting from room to room, filling Wonwoo with a deep sense of reverence and nostalgia of past years. There is just something about the turn of the seasons that fills him with a sense of more, like his body is being renewed with the trees. "Hurry with your breakfast so you can all help me with packing these up for the neighbors."

Seulgi sighs, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear carefully. "Can we not give the Joos and the Parks their Chuseok gifts this year? I kind of don't want to see any of their kids. I want to _enjoy_ my holidays, Aunt Chunhee."

"None of that, Seulgi," Hyunjae says firmly, stepping into the room, already in her traditional _hanbok_ , with its deep earthy colors and patterns. She stares at the two of them meaningfully. "We've been through this already."

"But they treat us like sh--"

"Young lady," Hyunjae warns, her eyes narrowing.

"Like sharks," Seulgi finishes. She crosses her arms, an action both she and Wonwoo know both of her aunts despise. "They treat me and Wonwoo like we're freaks of nature."

"You know you aren't that," Chunhee murmurs; she leans her head against the kitchen door frame. "What you are, are miracles. What you have are gifts."

Seulgi rolls her eyes. "I know _that_. But they don't." A few silent beats pass before she speaks up again. "They're worse with Wonwoo."

Wonwoo stops chewing, closes his eyes as his aunts zero in on him. He's going to kill Seulgi, honestly. He nudges her, glaring at her sharply.

"What? It's true."

"It's no big deal," he mutters under his breath. He hates it when his aunts hover over him because they're just as bad as Seulgi, if not worse, at being overprotective. _It's like I'm not the only guy in this household,_ he thinks to himself bitterly. "It's just a few of the kids at school, I can handle it."

"Wonwoo, are you sure?" Chunhee asks, and it's only that they ask out of genuine concern and love that stops Wonwoo from snapping.

"I'm really fine," he assures them. He gives them a small smile that's meant to quell their worries, and all three women in his life look back at him with furried brows. "Really. I can handle everything." Suddenly, the incense sticks in the pot by the window brighten with fire and smoke starts to waft into the room. Chunhee startles a little, but Wonwoo just smiles. "Let's finish breakfast so that we can be on our way."

Seulgi goes back to her cereal, muttering under her breath. "Show off," she spits out, but Wonwoo knows she doesn't mean it when he feels her pat his knee comfortingly.

 

«── « ⋅ » ──»

 

Their last stop for the day is the most important. At least, this is what Hyunjae always tells them.

The drive to their ancestors' resting place is not far, but it's not a cemetery, like where all their neighbors go. They've already been to the cemetery, paying their respects to their grandparents and Hyunjae's and Chunhee's parents, and several generations of Jeons before them. They've also been to their neighbors as well, their visits mercifully quick and free of awkward pleasantries.

This last stop takes them around the small forest-laden hills that separate one side of the island from the other, the dock and the quay and the schools and harbors and all the residential areas on one side, and the thickly forested area untouched by any person, that ends in a tiny cliff clearing jutting out into the sea, with a small dock that has weathered the thousands of storms that has hit their tiny island since it first became.

"How come no one ever comes here?" Wonwoo asks curiously. They're about to come to the edge of the forest, where Hyunjae parks her car every year as they make the trek inside. "Has anyone ever actually _tried_ to build a home or a shop here?" He's thirteen now, and more curious about the origin and history behind their gifts and their rituals, and this development pleased the aunts to no end, seeing as Seulgi was more focused on trying to wrest control over her own powers.

"There are many who've tried," Chunhee answers him, as Hyunjae slides smoothly into a makeshift parking slot at the side of the dirt road. "Mysterious things start happening before they even set up anything close to construction. No one gets hurt, of course, but they get persuaded to... relocate."

"Besides," Hyunjae says, grunting as she picks up the basket filled with their dinner. "Everyone who lives on this island knows and respects their boundaries, because the spirits of this island protect everyone who resides on it. That's how it's always been since the _jageunmanyeo_ created the island as a sanctuary for herself and her descendants. In exchange for the protection they would receive, the islanders would keep this part of the island sacred and unsullied by any manmade works."

"Who built the dock, then?" Seulgi asks. She has an arm through Wonwoo's, her other hand lifting her skirt so that it wouldn't drag along the ground.

"Ah, that's a good question, Seulgi," Chunhee beams, so pleased about Seulgi's question that the tips of her ears turn pink. "According to the stories, it was Jeon Haerim who built that. The _jageunmanyeo_ herself."

"Why?"

They've started walking into the forest by now, and Wonwoo looks up, smiling as he catches sight of the fireflies lighting up the well-worn path that they, and all the Jeons past, have taken to pay honor and respect to their great ancestor, Jeon Haerim. Even when he had spent most of his life on the mainland, being born there and with his mom's job as a photographer meaning she had to be able to travel to places quickly, he and his father, with Seulgi, had always taken this path together every Chuseok. A yearly homecoming of sorts, until his father and mother had been taken away from them because of an accident on the road.

(The first Chuseok after the accident was spent with his maternal grandparents, but although they were kind, it was clear that their advanced age made it difficult for them to take them to their father's hometown on the island, much more to take care of two grade school aged kids in general. Conversations were shared between the aunts and their grandparents, and it was agreed that they would handle raising Seulgi and Wonwoo instead. Wonwoo felt guilty for feeling so glad about it. Not being able to see their father's home had left him feeling incredibly antsy for the rest of the year, and a quiet peace settled in his heart the moment he'd stepped back onto the island, their new home.)

"Well, we all know that the reason Jeon Haerim created this island was to escape from the accusations from the people she had lived alongside so peacefully over the years with."

"I don't get that," Seulgi says, knotting her eyebrows together. "They used to respect her, for what she did for them. How could they just turn on her like that?"

"Haerim was incredibly gifted, and the spirits loved her, loved spending time with her and helping her heal the people of her village through her gift," Hyunjae pipes up. She runs a hand over the bark of the tree to her right, amused when flecks of light coalesce beneath her palm, running over her fingertips like they're eager to say hello. "But not all spirits are good. And not all forces have your best interest at the heart of it all."

Wonwoo knows this story, but it's partly tradition as well to go over it all. To remember that what they have is special, but not always welcome. To understand their place in the world, but not force themselves to be understood by it. To acknowledge that they are blessed, but in some ways also cursed.

"One such spirit, jealous and malevolent, infected the minds of the villagers, convinced them that she was seducing all of their husbands so that they would cast her out into the woods. The spirit was so possessive of Haerim that he orchestrated all of that so that she would reach out to it, lost and helpless, and give in to its darkness."

"But she was with child," Wonwoo continues. The sun had fully set by now, and only the fireflies lit their way, but Wonwoo knew this path like the back of his hand. He would not stumble. "The spirit, called soul eater, did not know that Haerim was pregnant when all of this was happening."

"Yes, Haerim had taken in a young farmer as a lover, and cared for him very much. It's why she knew that all the villagers' accusations were false, and why she chose not to succumb into despair."

"After half of the village had condemned her to be beaten to death by rod, Haerim prayed to the spirits of the forest to aid her in her greatest need. With her powers, and the support of the villagers who did not believe in the accusations behind her, she cast a spell that split the earth, until what separated her and the angry spirit was a sea."

"And that's how our lovely Choseungdal Island came to be," Seulgi concludes, in a faux scholarly tone that had Wonwoo hiding a grin and the aunts turning to her to chastise her. "But that still doesn't explain why there's a dock there."

"When the island had settled, the _jageunmanyeo_ built the dock for her lover to find. Every day, she waited on the end of that dock for her young love to come, but all her waiting was in vain."

"That sucks," Seulgi sighs. "I feel for great ancestor Haerim."

"Well," Hyunjae says. "She lived for a long time, and protected the people of the island and her descendants for even longer."

Hyunjae walks into an unencumbered area, surrounded by trees of untold ages, all of which reach into the heavens, framing the night sky and its smattering of stars in deep green foliage. She stops in front of a zelkova tree at the head of the grove, the small rickety table at its base looking even more diminutive in the dark of the night, and goes down on her knees in reverence.

Thousands of fireflies settle in the branches of the ancient tree, in all the adjacent trees surrounding them, until the whole grove is bathed in an almost otherworldly warm glow. Seulgi’s arm tightens around his and Wonwoo understands. Every year he is here, it awes him, takes his breath away, just how much magic there is all around him, how much of that magic is in him.

Chunhee looks at him, smiles knowingly. “She still protects us.”

They eat their _songpyeon_ in the grove, the sound of the sea crashing against the cliff wall beyond the trees a pleasant backdrop to their meal. Seugi fidgets so much her hair is falling out of the neat bun Chunhee had put it in at the start of the day, but Wonwoo eats his fill of the treats quietly, his eyes focused on the little table.

In his head, he imagines a faceless woman with long black hair, bowing at the foot of the tree; a woman, kind and humble and powerful beyond comprehension, gentle of hands, strong of mind. During Chuseok he always feels close to her, his greatest ancestor, but this year feels like a particularly significant time. Perhaps it’s because he’s been working even harder to learn and cast the spells his aunts teach him and Seulgi every evening after they’re both done with their homework, maybe it’s because this year the children he grew up with have become harsher of tongue, but this year he feels even more motivated to connect to his heritage as a Jeon witch.

He looks down at his fingers, and wonders whether he even possesses a smidgen of her greatness, of her strength.

(A small breeze picks up, unnoticed, in response.)

 

«── « ⋅ » ──»

 

When they pull up their driveway, someone’s waiting by the door.

Wonwoo’s terrible eyesight can’t make out much, but the aunts don’t seem too alarmed, and Hyunjae has eyes like a hawk. Clearly it’s someone they know. Seulgi clutches at his elbow, but more out of curiosity than concern.

When the car rumbles to a silence, Hyunjae unlocks the doors so that Seulgi and Wonwoo can leave. “Go inside now,” Chunhee murmurs softly. “Don’t be alarmed. It’s just Mrs. Jung. You remember her right? She works by the shop.”

Wonwoo still can’t see very clearly, but when Chunhee mentions her name, he can recognize some of her features: smooth graying hair, frail pink cardigan, silver wire-rimmed glasses. He and Seulgi exit the vehicle and climb the stairs to their door, bowing deeply in front of the middle-aged woman, who looked a few handfuls older than their aunts. “Good evening, Mrs. Jung,” they said in unison; Mrs. Jung simply nodded at them, distracted.

For a house of witches, the Jeon home was warm, almost cozy. The house was nestled neatly into the end of the rows of houses fourth from the bottom, the backyard extending far into an unruly garden (“its natural state,” Hyunjae explains snippily, when Seulgi teases her about how high the wild grass grows), full of the aunts’ herbs, vegetables and flowers. Wonwoo and Seulgi spent many an evening playing underneath the small clutch of trees near their back door, the tallest one with a branch gently holding up a pair of tire swings. There was always a light on at the Jeon house, and its windows would always be framed with a soft yellow, as if glowing from within.

(Sometimes, Wonwoo thinks its the only home he’s ever known, his memories of the handful of homes he and Seulgi had moved into over the years with their parents flowing into one amorphous picture in his head that he’s afraid is slowly getting erased over time.)

They toe off their shoes at the front door and make their way up the stairs, but Seulgi grabs Wonwoo by the collar of his robe before he turns left in the direction of his room.

“What are you—”

“Shhh!” she whispers, before gesturing at him to creep a few more steps down, where they had a full view of the kitchen if they crouched down just so. Wonwoo rolls his eyes, but he inches down until he’s sitting next to Seulgi, observing the exchanges in the kitchen between Mrs. Jung and his aunts.

“Why are we here?”

“Aren’t you curious about why she’s here?”

Wonwoo pouts mulishly. “This isn’t the first time someone’s come over.”

“Usually they approach the aunts at the shop,” Seulgi muses, referring to the little shop the aunts ran during the day where they sold their garden offerings and a few salves and natural remedies. “I wonder why Mrs. Jung couldn’t wait until after Chuseok.”

 _I guess we’re going to find out,_ Wonwoo thinks. He presses his face against the wooden rail, Seulgi’s chin perched on his shoulder. They watch as Hyunjae sits Mrs. Jung at the table politely, but not entirely friendly. Chunhee’s back is to them, filling the pot with water for some tea.

Their conversation is too far to fully comprehend, but Wonwoo can hear bits and pieces.

“... I need this, I’m willing to give…”

“Money isn’t...” Wonwoo hears Chunhee say, but Hyunjae waves her hand at her sister.

“Her mind is made up, Chunhee,” Hyunjae says, in her low voice that Wonwoo sometimes think is being whispered straight into his ear. “Get the book.”

“The book.” Seulgi’s grip on his shoulders tightens. “She’s asking for a spell.”

“What else could she be asking for?” Wonwoo replies, but without malice. He’s far too curious about what the elderly lady desired so badly she couldn’t wait until the end of their holidays to ask it from them. The islanders did this fairly often, dropping by the aunts’ shops and asking for solutions to their problems, ranging from an answer to a nosy neighbor to inflicting a curse on a wayward spouse. On an island as small as theirs, where everyone knew everybody, anything even the slightest bit out of the ordinary was always attributed to the strange Jeon witches, never mind that the root cause of the sudden departure of Mrs. Joo’s husband from the island under mysterious circumstances was Mrs. Joo herself asking for it.

(Seulgi had often groused about how hypocritical it all was, and Wonwoo couldn’t help but agree, especially when the Joo children were some of the biggest finger pointers at school.

Seulgi lied to their aunts though; Wonwoo got it harder, but Seulgi took it much worse than he did.

He thinks it’s because Seulgi has always yearned to be liked.)

The bigger the spell, the heftier the pay, which never hurt.

Hyunjae and Chunhee had often told them that what they were doing was normal, was a consequence of living, but there is one thing that they must always ask the spell recipients, and that was to ask if they were ready to face the consequences of their desires.

(The thing about spells, they were taught to understand, is that it didn’t always give you what you wanted in the most direct and straightforward manner, and in some cases, the manner the universe went about giving you what you wanted ran the gamut from whimsical to sinister.)

“There is a price the universe, that the forces of nature, ask of you whenever you ask something from them,” Chunhee murmurs, smoothing out the pages of the book as she places it in front of Mrs. Jung. Behind her, Hyunjae disappears in the direction of the back door.

“She looks strange,” Seulgi murmurs into Wonwoo’s ear, and Wonwoo nods in agreement. Mrs. Jung worked at the docks, and they often saw her while they helped out their aunts at the store. She always had a pleasant smile on her face, and had always asked about school while they played on the docks before sunset. “Don’t you think so?”

There was a manic look in her eyes that had Wonwoo feeling a little bit disturbed. “I’ve never seen her like this… what’s gotten her like this?”

“Beats me,” Seulgi says, shushing herself when Hyunjae comes back in, struggling with something in her hands.

“Oh,” Wonwoo breathes. It’s a dove--white and delicate and scared; its head keeps looking this way and that, quiet little coos rumbling from its body that Wonwoo and Seulgi can hear halfway up the stairs. “Oh no.”

“Wow,” Seulgi breathes. “I wonder what’s going to happen.”

“Tell the universe what you want,” Hyunjae tells Mrs. Jung, placing a long silver needle on the table in front of her. Chunhee is busy reading from the book, whispering incantations into the air. “Be very specific, then plunge the needle into the heart of the dove.”

“No,” Wonwoo pleads a little, his fists bunching up in his lap. He sees Chunhee look up from the book, in their general direction, and he sees the sympathy in her eyes before she continues.

“I want him to love me, I want him to love me and only me now that his wife has passed,” Mrs. Jung says, clearly and loudly. “I’ve loved him since I was a young girl, and I want to be the one who makes him happy now. I would do anything for him. Anything.”

Seulgi rubs his hair reassuringly.

“Don’t look, Nonu,” Seulgi says. “It’ll be okay.”

Wonwoo looks away just as she picks up the needle, pushing his hands into his ears to stop him from hearing the sound of the needle piercing the bird’s sternum. Seulgi takes his hand and leads him back up the stairs, into his room, to the window where the moonlight spills in; he’s still upset and she hugs him then, takes his head and tucks it into the crook of her neck. He lets out a tiny little sob that’s muffled by Seulgi’s hair.

“She must be so in love with him,” Seulgi marvels, stroking Wonwoo’s hair. “To be so desperate as to come to the aunts for a solution. She must love him so. That’s so powerful.”

“What kind of love would cause you to harm another living thing?” Wonwoo mutters, trying to stop the tears from spilling down his cheeks. He can’t even lift his head, only separating from Seulgi to press his back against the wall, rubbing at his eyes.

“A great one, a true one,” Seulgi muses. “She said she’s loved him since she was a girl. That must have been at least thirty or forty years ago. Only a true love lasts that long.”

“Or a desperate one,” Wonwoo retorts. He sighs, leans his head against the window pane, looks across the window at his sister. “I never want to fall in love.”

Seulgi grins and hugs her knees to her chest, perches her chin on her kneecaps. “That’s where you and I differ, brother. I can’t wait to fall in love.”

 

«── « ⋅ » ──»

 

“What are you up to?”

Wonwoo pushes on the glasses that he’s had to taken to wearing because of his worsening eyesight, before looking at his sister. “I’m going to the backyard. You’re welcome to join me.”

Seulgi looks at the things in his arms, suspiciously. “Planning anything in particular? You’ve got some collection of red flowers there in that bucket, plus the persimmon skins from the ones we’ve been eating the past few days. Oh, and not to mention _the aunts’ spellbook_.”

She bounds up to him, takes the book from his arms to ease his burdens. “You’re casting a spell.”

Wonwoo sighs. “Yes, I am.”

“Without the aunts here,” Seulgi says pointedly.

Wonwoo squirms. “I don’t think they’ll mind. They always said we were free to use the book and experiment with our powers.”

“What kind of spell are you casting?”

“You’ll see,” Wonwoo says mysteriously, before he turns around and exits through the back door. Seulgi sighs deeply, before tucking her feet into her outdoor slippers and following her brother into the trees.

Their backyard has plenty of trees, tall and sturdy and strong, and Seulgi and Wonwoo have played in and among them often, since the four years since they’ve started living on Choseungdal Island. They walk into them now, unsupervised, knowing that what dwells in and around them mean them no harm.

Seulgi and Wonwoo hum together as they walk, a song from their childhood. He shoots her a grin, giddy that she remembered it just like he did. Seulgi pretends to knock into him, nudging past him, the book in her arms, smiling at him as she races forward

She beats him to the tree. They both knew that this was where Wonwoo was heading, because both of them knew that if spells were to be cast, then the natural energy would be strongest where the roots were deepest. The zelkova growing in their garden was nowhere near as grand as the tree in their ancestor’s grove, but it was nearly as ancient, the passing seasons only standing tribute to the tree’s strength, its hold on the earth mighty and true.

The aunts called it their wishing tree, and wish was what Wonwoo was going to do.

“Over here,” Wonwoo says, picking a spot underneath the wishing tree. Moonlight filters through the gaps in the tree’s canopy, dappling the ground with spots of bright white. It’s still a full moon tonight, since it’s the last day of Chuseok, which makes it the best time to cast spells.

“What are you going to wish for, Nonu?” Seulgi asks him softly, her nickname for him only coming out when she’s particularly worried for him.

“Love,” Wonwoo answers her. “I’m going to wish for love.”

Seulgi opens her mouth, but shuts it when she sees Wonwoo about to start on his rituals. She’s curious, but not curious enough to interrupt once he begins.

He inhales deeply, mentally asking the natural forces of the universe, the powers that pull at the moon and sea, that cause the sun to flare, and the grass to grow, to aid him in his desire. Immediately, he feels his skin prickle, feels the earth around him exhale peacefully, open to listen to his call.

(Casting spells came naturally to the both of them, but especially to Wonwoo. Chunhee told him that he was special, for not every witch had the ability to cast spells without the incantations needed to call the forces of nature to attention, to his heed. His father had something like it, Hyunjae had added, before he tucked away all his powers to be able to follow after their mother as her assistant on the mainland.

Their powers were never a secret from their mother, but they were never really encouraged the same way they were encouraged under the aunts. It’s something that Wonwoo appreciates, because his feelings towards his powers are that they’re gift, and something to be respected.

Seulgi’s feelings towards her powers are a little more complicated, since they require more work on her part to come out. It’s something they haven’t really discussed, but Wonwoo feels it in the frustrated little sounds she makes whenever Chunhee gently asks her to repeat her chanting exercises again.)

“My true love will come with the storms,” Wonwoo murmurs, as he writes the same on gold ink in each strip of persimmon skin. Once he finishes, he drops the strip in the small wooden bucket he carried from the house, the same bucket filled with different red petals.

“My true love will have a head of fire;  
My true love will have lightning coursing through their veins;  
My true love will have a countenance like that of the sun;  
but my true love’s favorite shape will be that of a star."

“My true love will come from the sea;  
And will find their home with me.”

When he finishes writing down every line, he starts digging a hole with his hands at the foot of the tree, deep enough to place the bucket in. Seulgi watches him set the bucket down gently into the hole, using his hands again to fill the hole in the earth he displaced. There’s dirt streaked on his cheek by the time he finishes, which she wipes away with the handkerchief she keeps in her pocket, sighing.

 _Casting spells is always more about work and concentration than fancy sparkles and lights,_ Wonwoo ponders idly. He lifts a hand and pats Seulgi’s hand when the handkerchief begins to feel raw against his cheek.

“Your true love sounds like a weather disturbance than a person," she remarks after a few moments of silence, but not unkindly.

Wonwoo sits and stares at the mound of freshly dug earth, prepares for his sister to scoff at his reasoning. "The more unrealistic the person is, the more unlikely I will meet them, and that I will fall in love."

Seulgi shrugs, before sitting next to him. "I don't understand why you're so afraid to fall in love - that's what makes life worth living."

Seulgi, the born romantic. Seulgi, the impulsive, hot-headed one. Seulgi, the one who runs headlong into everything, living life to the fullest while he sticks to the sidelines, every move careful and precise. _What a pair of siblings they make,_ Wonwoo thinks, not for the first time.

Wonwoo stops picking at his fraying cuffs. He spent a lot of time the past few days, thinking of the people he knows who have experienced love. He thinks of Mrs. Jung, thinks of his father, who loved so much he cursed his mother and then himself. "A Jeon isn't meant to fall in love, Seulgi. You know that."

At this, Seulgi scoffs. "That's a stupid family rumor. I thought we agreed that it’s stupid and that we didn’t believe in it.”

“I never said that,” Wonwoo protests, pouting. “And it’s not a rumor. Aunt Hyunjae said that great ancestor Haerim got so distressed when her farmer didn’t make his way to the island that she cursed her whole family line to feel the same as she did. Anyone who fell in love with a Jeon would be cursed to suffer an untimely demise. That’s why Uncle Donghyun died before we met him. And Aunt Chunhee’s great love left her and then died while he was serving in the military.”

Wonwoo looks at Seulgi. “I’m not doing that to anyone.”

“Those are all just coincidences, Wonwoo,” Seulgi says, exasperated now.

"What about mom?"

"A curse didn't kill her _or_ dad. Rainy roads did that." A dark look comes over Seulgi’s eyes now, as what usually happens when they talk about their parents.

"Dad loved her so much, he doomed her,” Wonwoo argues. “The night before they died, dad kept running around the house; he nearly tore it apart looking for the black beetle because he kept hearing it tick. You know that the sound of the black beetle is a harbinger of death in our family. And when he couldn’t find it, knowing what would happen, he went with her.”

“And left us,” Seulgi mutters bitterly.

Wonwoo folds his arms over his chest, the heartbreak he feels whenever he thinks of his parents settling over his chest uncomfortably.

“I don't want to do that to anyone. No one deserves that," Wonwoo whispers.

Seulgi harrumphs, annoyed, before standing up abruptly. "Guess there's only two ways to solve this: break the curse, or just stop becoming a Jeon."

Wonwoo looks at her, worried now. "You don't mean that, Seulgi."

Seulgi sets her chin, a steely glint in her eye. The red of her shirt seems brighter in the light of the full moon, and the tilt of her jaw makes it look like she’s casting her own spell.

"Watch me."


	2. Preparation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo grows up, and learns how to love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOL, updated by the beginning of February. What a laugh and a half.
> 
> If you've seen the movie, this scene just about concludes the opening, so we've mostly established the important premises at this point, and now the fun stuff mostly begins! Maybe we'll even get to see Soonyoung in the next chapter. Who knows? Hope springs eternal, lmao.

Wonwoo loses his sister when he’s sixteen.

They’d spent the last few weeks arguing about it, away from their aunts’ curious ears. Seulgi was eighteen now; she’d already graduated from school and the aunts had already asked about her pitching in more hours to work at the shop. Wonwoo thinks the aunts already know that she has one foot off the island, however, and have feigned ignorance because there’s really nothing much they can do to stop her.

Wonwoo, on the other hand, spends every moment feeding her bits of facts that he learns about the mainland; the important things, like crime rates and suspected serial killings and the likelihood of kidnapping for young women in their early twenties. Seulgi rolls her eyes at him most of the time, but she understands that it’s because he’s too attached to her.

More than once, Seulgi suggests that Wonwoo come along with her.

“I’m just so tired of all this, Wonwoo. The staring, the prejudice, the unnecessary jibes about me casting spells on them all because they pop boners at the sight of me in shorts,” Seulgi rants, while she tosses in shirt after shirt into the beat-up old suitcase that Wonwoo remembers lugging onto the deck the day they arrived on the island. “I just want to exist without all of this surrounding me.”

“But Seulgi…” Wonwoo starts but drifts off, not knowing what to say. It strikes Wonwoo, suddenly, that if he doesn’t say anything, his sister will be boarding a boat and sailing away from the island and away from him. And while their bond as siblings is close, there’s a very real chance that he will never see Seulgi again. “Seulgi, what if something happens to you?”

Seulgi sighs, and looks at her little brother for a long time. Wonwoo’s curled up in the armchair in her room that’s been pushed up to the window; he’s trying not to cry but the telltale signs of a sting inching its way up his nose and resting beneath his eyelids are there. He blinks away the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes, coughs to clear his throat.

“Come with me.”

Wonwoo looks up at her. “You know I can’t.”

“I’m not talking about school, I just—”

“I don’t. I don’t want to go,” Wonwoo says it again. It’s the same answer every time she’s asked.

Seulgi sinks onto the bed, sorrow weighing down her shoulders. “Well you can’t blame a girl for trying,” she tries to say lightly, but it doesn’t mask the sound of both their hearts breaking. Seconds pass, and Wonwoo realizes that every empty second is another second closer to goodbye. He thinks he should be filling these moments with something more meaningful than downturned gazes and thudding hearts, but everything that he thinks of that can be voiced out loud is insufficient to convey what he really wants to say.

When Seulgi’s suitcase is packed and lined up against the window, Wonwoo lets out a sad little noise.

“Wait a second,” Seulgi says again, brightness glinting in her eye.

Wonwoo watches Seulgi rifle through the pocket of her backpack, unearthing a small Swiss knife that the aunts had gotten her one birthday when she still wanted to be a girl scout. She sank onto the floor of her room, pulling at Wonwoo’s ankle for him to follow her, pulling out the knife when he’s finally sitting in front of her with his knees pulled up against his chest.

Seulgi holds the knife out, pointedly looking at Wonwoo. “I need you to heat the edge of the blade.”

Wonwoo’s brow furrows. “Why me?”

“Because,” Seulgi says, mouth pursed and set in a straight line, before exhaling patiently. “You’re much better at this than I am.”

“You’re a better witch,” Seulgi says; she says it so simply and matter-of-factly, with no hint of jealousy or malice. Wonwoo doesn’t know what to say about this, but Seulgi just smiles at him and pats his knee gently. “You are an amazing witch, Wonwoo. You will have powers beyond even the aunts, I’m sure of it. And I am so proud of you for it.”

“But don’t let it stop you from living your life,” she continues softly. She puts down the knife and sighs, before reaching forward and holding him by the shoulders. “Don’t be afraid to live a little, and love a lot.” Wonwoo wishes he could believe in the notion of love as ardently as Seulgi does; there must be something so beautiful about it that’s making her willing to turn away from family, from him.

“You have so much love inside you, it shouldn’t be tamped down and hidden away.”

“It doesn’t matter, Seulgi,” Wonwoo murmurs, dismissively. “You know I won’t do it because of the curse, and because—”

“Don’t you dare let anyone tell you that it’s wrong to love who you love,” Seulgi tells him firmly, fire blazing in her eyes. Wonwoo bites his lip. It’s a conversation they have had so many times—tiny island populations were not the most welcoming to witches in general, but being a boy witch who liked other boys? They would never look at him again. “Promise me.”

“I—”

“Wonwoo,” Seulgi repeats his name, shaking his frame. “The people who love you, love you for who you are.” She holds his cheek now, and Wonwoo casts his gaze downward, not trusting himself to look her in the eye.

“Take care of the aunts,” Seulgi says, and at this part her voice cracks, betraying how sad she actually feels about leaving her home. Wonwoo doesn’t say anything, but his lip trembles just a little. “You take care of them. Make sure Aunt Chunhee takes her vitamins, and remind Aunt Hyunjae to watch her blood pressure, especially around high tide season, because she gets really stressed out about Great Ancestor Haerim’s little dock getting washed away by the seas. Don’t forget to regularly weed out the back part of the garden; there’s so many animals that get caught in the high grass if you don’t weed it out--”

“Seulgi, stay,” Wonwoo pleads, his throat catching on the tear in his voice. “Please. _Noona_.”

“Wonwoo,” she repeats, laughing. She uses the back of her hand to wipe at her tears, and then the crook of her index fingers to brush at Wonwoo’s eyes. “Wonwoo, Wonwoo. My sweet little _dongsaeng_. You will thrive here when I cannot.” She looks at him, plaintive expression in her eyes. “I want to live.”

Wonwoo looks at her for the longest time, and, exhaling, holds his hand out for the blade. She places it in his palm without saying a word.

The magic thrums in Wonwoo’s veins, coalesces in a warmth in his fingertips. Seulgi’s right—he’s gotten so much better at it, no longer needing to murmur incantations out loud for the simplest spells. He runs a finger down the length of the flat of the blade, watches as the edge glows almost white from the heat. He hands it back to her wordlessly, and waits.

Seulgi takes the knife from him and flips it around in her fingers; laying her left palm out between them, she grits her teeth and runs the tip of the blade diagonally across the flat of her palm, from the base of her index finger to the opposite side of her wrist. She winces to herself, ignoring Wonwoo’s panicked little whimper.

“Seulgi, what the—”

“Give me your hand, Wonwoo.”

Wonwoo looks up at her, bug-eyed. “Are you serious?”

Impatient, Seulgi huffs out a breath before gingerly taking Wonwoo’s left palm and doing the same thing to him, ignoring her brother’s hiss of pain.

“Even if I stop being a Jeon, I will never stop being your sister, Nonu,” she murmurs under her breath. Wonwoo stares at her, and immediately he is just struck by how fiercely brave she is in this moment. She looks up into his eyes, conviction in her expression clear as day as she clasps their hands together, the blood from the cuts on their palms mixing and trickling down their joint palms.

“Your blood, my blood, our blood,” Seulgi chants three times, and Wonwoo closes the incantations with one phrase.

“As we will it.”

Watching the light pulse at their joined palms and marveling at the frissons of energy drawing purple lines through their veins, Wonwoo thinks that this kind of magic is probably the most powerful of all.

Five minutes later, Seulgi is out the door before the rise of the sun, eager to catch a boat alongside the fishermen, and Wonwoo watches her go, cradling his still bleeding hand to his chest.

—-

The island of Chosangdeul is small, but busy; there’s always a fleet of boats coming and going from the sturdy dock that’s been there for several centuries already. Famous for being hardy and fastidious fisherpeople, the people of Chosangdeul were versatile nonetheless. Crafts and wares of all kinds were sold at small shops and stalls all along the pier, and markets and stores were always swarming with traffic from both mainlanders and locals.

The aunts run a small herb and flower shop just off the wharf, nameless and tiny, but Wonwoo adores it, admires all the little work that goes into running it every day. When he’s not in his school’s small library, he spends his time helping people identify plants for their everyday needs, and when there are no customers, he pulls up a chair and paws through his aunts’ spellbook.

His aunts have noticed that his powers have been improving, and by the time he finishes with high school, he’s handling resident requests on his own, making small balms and potions. They watch over him with motherly eyes, so of course they are the first to witness his strength.

They are also the first to notice his loneliness.

It isn’t something he pays a lot of attention to, necessarily. He is, by his nature, a solitary human. It was only Seulgi that had prodded him to venture beyond his safe spaces and try to make friends, but it felt somehow dishonest to call the people his age his friends when the discomfort stilted the air between them whenever Wonwoo tried to ask them about things like what books they read recently. Small talk, Seulgi called it, just made him feel small.

When she left, he stopped trying altogether, preferring to spend his afternoons at the shop, social interactions limited to polite smiles and quiet ‘thank you’s whenever a satisfied customer left the store.

“Wonwoo,” his Aunt Chunhee says one time, voice quiet and soothing. She’s more stooped now, her hair a little grayer, but she remained the most nurturing presence in Wonwoo’s life. “Why don’t you take the afternoon off? Invite someone for coffee at that new café that opened up by the lighthouse? It’s a beautiful spot to watch the sea.”

“It’s okay, Aunt Chunhee,” Wonwoo replies, smiling at her so that she wouldn’t fret about him sidestepping her intentions. “I’d rather stay here and help you out. Besides, Seungkwan is off-island for the week, and Jihoon isn’t due back for another month or so.”

(Seungkwan and Jihoon are the closest things Wonwoo has to friends on the island—Seungkwan is a boy a few years younger than him who finds Wonwoo curious and his aunts delightful, so he spends some time charming customers into the aunts’ flower shop in his free time. Jihoon is a boy just as quiet as Wonwoo and the only person his age who doesn’t find him terrifying or freaky. Wonwoo played video games with him once a week growing up but Jihoon’s currently taking up business at some university on the mainland, so their weekly game dates have been postponed to the summer.)

“If you insist, Wonwoo,” Chunhee sighs. Hyunjae looks up from where she’s keeping the records of their sales, and Wonwoo knows they’re exchanging pointed glances. Wonwoo sighs; his aunts are more transparent than they think they are. He knows they worry about what would happen to him in the event of their untimely passing. It makes him want to sigh with exasperation, because he is much sturdier than he looks, but he knows they do it out of love.

Love, the one thing that keeps weaving in and out of Wonwoo’s life, nudging at the forces around him, making things happen, but never touching him. And perhaps that’s how Wonwoo likes it.

—-

They say that the most remarkable things happen when you least expect it.

For Wonwoo, life changes on a particularly unremarkable late Thursday afternoon when he’s 19.

This particular afternoon, Wonwoo is at the shop, hunched over a book about flowers and their magical properties, waiting quietly for customers. The aunts had excused themselves about half an hour earlier, saying they had things to buy at the market before it closed for the day. Wonwoo had nodded and wished them safety on their little excursion, completely missing the way they nudged each other sharply and rushed the other out the door.

He’s just turned the page onto rhododendrons and sunflowers when the bell rings.

He looks up and the greeting dies on his lips as his eyes meet another pair of eyes, light brown, kind and impossibly crinkled with delight.

“Hello,” says the smiling young man in his shop. He’s taller than Wonwoo, but doesn’t look that much older than him, with messy dark hair tucked underneath a dark blue beanie and smudged up clothes hidden under an orange windbreaker. “I’m looking for some flowers.”

In the next few minutes, Wonwoo learns that the young man is an apprentice boatman, new to this route, that he’s just stopping by to buy his mother some flowers before riding back to the mainland, and that his name is Jungmin.

There’s something warm that clutches in Wonwoo’s chest when he watches Jungmin, tall and broad-shouldered with the beginnings of a seafarer’s tan kissing his cheeks, stare down in wonder at the small bouquet of daisies Wonwoo fussily arranges for him.

“This is so pretty,” he says quietly, before looking back into Wonwoo’s eyes, a slow smile stretching across his face. “Thank you so much.”

“It’s Wonwoo. I’m… I’m Wonwoo.”

“Wonwoo…” Jungmin holds out his hand, and clasps Wonwoo’s thin hand in his, completely engulfing it with his large sailor’s palm. “It’s my pleasure.”

Wonwoo prays he doesn’t feel his pulse jackhammering against his fingertips, and wonders how it would feel to entwine their fingers together.

Somewhere beyond them, the boathorns start to sound, signaling the departure of a boat. It shakes both of them out of their reveries, and Wonwoo turns red at getting so caught up in his whims.

(The voice in his head that sounds oddly like Seulgi snippily tells him that this is the first time in his life he’s ever had any whims, and that perhaps he’s way overdue for them.)

“I think, I think I have to go,” Jungmin says, voice thick, as if stuck in his throat. He coughs, clears it up. “I’ll be back, though. Soon.” He smiles. “I’d love to… see you again?”

The tentativeness in his voice makes Wonwoo think—he _thinks_ —that he’s hoping he’s not misinterpreting anything, and it makes Wonwoo panic.

“Yes, we really hope you’ll come back to the shop,” Wonwoo says stiffly. “We appreciate your business.”

A light dims in Jungmin’s eyes a little. “Oh. Business. Right. That’s all.” He chuckles softly under his breath. “I guess I’ll see you around Wonwoo.”

He turns and leaves the shop, and Wonwoo is left behind, confused and flushing.

“Wonwoo, we’re back! Wonwoo?” Chunhee’s voice breaks through his stupor. “Are you alright?”

“I saw you sold a nice bunch of daisies to that young man who was leaving here,” Hyunjae mentions, while shrugging off her coat. “It looked beautiful.”

“Did you, did you see where he was going? I mean what direction?” Wonwoo finds himself asking, and his aunts look back at him, curious but very slightly sly.

“He was walking to the docks.”

Another boathorn sounds, and Wonwoo’s moving before he realizes what he’s doing.

Toward the docks he walks, and when walking seems insufficient, he begins to run; he’s not even sure about where he’s going, only that he has to find a boy. The boy.

He finds him on the dock, three boats past, beside a ship with a blue flag.

When he looks up and stares straight ahead, Jungmin is standing there, watching him, transfixed. The ropes in his arms fall to the ground as Wonwoo walks up to him, stopping abruptly when he gets within arm’s reach. Wordlessly, Jungmin smiles and opens his arms for Wonwoo to step into them.

Something thrums in Wonwoo's veins, a deep tugging, a knowing, a settling, and he wonders if this is love. If this is love, he thinks, then he surrenders.

Wonwoo holds the boy's face in his hands and smiles, radiant, before kissing him.

\-----

_Hae-rim’s eyes open before the first rooster begins to crow. She blinks the sleep away from her eyes, quiet, the morning sun still a promise on the horizon._

_She shifts, as if to get out of bed, and arms tighten around her waist._

_“Go back to sleep, my love.”_

_“You, too, must awaken soon, dearest,” Hae-rim whispers, a fond smile spreading on her face. She obliges, however; she turns around in her lover’s embrace, lies her head back down on his chest. “Your chickens will be reminding you of that fact in a few moments.”_

_“Let them crow,” Haseok grumbles; Hae-rim hides a smile against his skin. The cold from outside of her lover’s humble abode slowly recedes, making way for the rising sun, but there’s warmth yet in their shared embrace, in the slide of their calves against the modest cloth protecting their skin against the scratch of the straw. Hae-rim usually hastens to greet the sun, but knows that nature will understand if she wants to steal a few more handfuls of sleep in the arms of her beloved._

_She trails fingers up his biceps to clutch at the thin covers, thin because it was bought for one person but was spread to cover two; she tugs at them to come over their shoulders, tucked just under their chins._

_To say that falling in love with Haseok was part of her plans was simply false; she hadn’t known what the universe had in store for her when he had sent her a basket of rice and a plea to help cure his patch of land from drought. She had brought along with her the purest, cleanest water, a shovel, and some enchanted stones that would draw out the salinity from his soil._

_What she found, instead, was the warmest of hearts and the kindest of souls. She gave her heart to him in an instant, and had been spending more time in his bed than in her own._

_Being with him, that was living. She no longer cared about the traditions of her village, of the whispers that have come to surround their relation--the unmarried medicine woman and the young, orphaned farmer. It mattered not. She had never felt more alive than in his arms and every time he kissed her, the heady rush of magic ran through her veins._

_“Were I to run away, would you go with me?” she asks him now, face turned into his neck to breathe his scent, the skies turning light and the sounds of crickets fading into the dawn._

_He pulls back and she looks up at him, looks at her whole world, in his face. He lifts a hand to push her hair away from her face, and smiles, kindly, despite the early hour; he could never be anything but. “To the ends of the earth, my magical one. And beyond.”_

_Moved beyond telling, she leans in to press her mouth to his._

\-----

Dear Seulgi,

You were right.

I’ve met someone, and I’ve been with him for about two years now. You would like him. His name is Jungmin, and he’s a sailor. I’ve moved out of the aunts’ house and into a small apartment by the pier and every day after I close the shop, I sit by the window and wait for the evening tides to bring the boats back in.

The aunts like him. They like him a lot. We have dinner there every night because they know I can barely survive making a sandwich on my own, much less feed a small household for two.

It has been about a year since we decided to move in together. He knows about my magic, but I haven’t been really focusing on that. Too busy. (No, it’s not that. Stop thinking that.) I’ve started my own garden, in the little patch of dirt behind our small apartment. It’s not much, but it’s something.

Every morning I tend to it, before making my way over to the shop to help out the aunts. They’re doing very well, and send you their love. As for the rest of the town… it was weird at the start, but I think people have come to accept having a quiet gay witch on the island with them. They don’t stop and stare quite as often as they used to, though I think that’s mostly because Jungmin is really nice and strangely sociable enough for the both of us. 

I wish you could meet him. You would adore him, and he would adore you right back. My life is quiet and kind of boring, but it’s cozy and nice and filled with love. I’m happy. All I need is for you to be back here.

Come back home to visit soon. I miss you.

Wonwoo

\-----

Wonwoo,

I know it’s been about six months since you wrote the letter but I rarely get to my forwarding address here in the city. First of all, oh my God! Wonwoo! I’m so so so so happy for you! I can’t wait to meet him; he sounds wonderful. The picture you included in the letter of the two of you was adorable - he is so tall! Are you both just going to tower over me when I get home eventually?

I’ll do my best to get back there soon but life is a little hectic right now. I’m juggling two or three jobs right now, but it’s been a blast so far. I’ve met someone recently too. He’s rich and handsome and he loves me so much. His name is Choi Jaekyo, and I met him in a bar a few months ago. We’ve been inseparable ever since. He treats me like a queen, and it feels like I’m his whole world. I feel precious, like crown jewels. It makes me happy.

I’m so happy we’re both happy, Nonu. I will try my best to get time off so I can hop on a boat and see you and meet your love. Maybe I can even bring Jaekyo along.

Love,

Kang Seulgi

\-----

Wonwoo is making tea when he first hears it.

Initially he thinks it’s his ears playing tricks on him; the likelihood that crickets would be out this late in the morning in his apartment was low. He tilts his head a little to listen harder, but is greeted with silence. He shrugs, blows a little on the surface of the water in his cup, and gets ready for his day instead.

He thinks nothing of the quiet little cricks until he’s walking to the shop and he hears them from somewhere behind him. He furrows his brow and even tries to shake his head, as if it were some kind of noise stuck in his ear that he could dispel through motion.

He doesn’t want to voice out what it is because to do so would give credence to the little frissons of anxiety that are climbing into his chest and tightening at his lungs. He goes about his day, trying his best to ignore the sound of it, ringing up sales and suggesting an herb or two to a regular customer.

The thing about beetle noises is that they’re never consistent; they rise and fall with the beetle’s state of being. If it’s distressed, it starts to hiss in a strange cacophony of disjointed sounds that only get louder with every passing beat that it feels threatened.

The louder it gets, the more Wonwoo’s heartbeat starts to feel like it’s hammering at his ribcage, so he closes shop early and starts to press his ears to the floorboards, searching for the culprit, attempting to root out the cause of his anxiety. 

Jungmin is still at sea, has been even before the beetle started to click.

He starts to think that he’s rid of the thing when he hasn’t heard it for more than fifteen minutes when all of a sudden the boat horn blows, followed by a tremendous clap of thunder.

Wonwoo walks out of the shop as sheets of rain start to fall, the wind blowing inwards making the drops practically horizontal against the ground. Everyone is rushing away from the sea, frantically racing up to higher land, but Wonwoo ignores their insistent tugging at his hands. He walks steadily out to the dock, mind devoid of everything but words upon words of protective magic, of homing hexes, of spells to bring home a loved one.

He raises his hands, ignoring the cold nerves clutching at his spine, and speaks. He whispers fervent incantations into the wind, and he feels the magic inside him gather up and empty out through his fingers, out from his feet, down into the crevices of the harbor and out into the sea. He chants ancient words, whispers desperate pleas, begging the powers that be to bring home the man he loves.

The sound of the beetle accompanies him through the storm, and he is equal parts hope and despair with every second that passes and he remains standing, determined, on that wooden dock.

“Wonwoo!”

He feels rather than sees his aunt Hyunjae racing up from behind him, to grab at his shoulders.

“Wonwoo, what’s happening?”

“Aunt Hyunjae. Help me,” he pleads, his voice hoarse to his own ears. His glasses are streaked with rain drops, and the hoodie he’s wearing sticks to his thin frame like second skin. They’re both soaked to the bone, but Wonwoo can’t take his eyes off the horizon.

“Alright, Wonwoo. Alright. Chunhee! Get out here!”

She holds him, and lends him her strength. When Chunhee follows, car door loud as she slams it closed, she wraps her arms around his waist. All three witches close their eyes, entwine their fingers, whisper their wish. _Bring him home._

After a long two hours, the sky lightens and Wonwoo watches, still, breath held. His aunts form a protective circle around him as he looks out into the horizon. 

Eventually, he sees something at the very edge. Two ships instead of the three usual ships sailing in. No blue flag.

In that moment, Wonwoo knows that, despite throwing everything inside him to protect him, he had lost his Jungmin. His legs give way, and he collapses, numb, onto the dock, and the last thing he hears before everything goes black is the quiet crick of the black beetle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP sweet Jungmin, you were a lovely character to write ;;


End file.
